


Living by the Stake...

by matrixrefugee



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 22:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17537453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: Paul contemplates how fiction has suddenly become very real...





	Living by the Stake...

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/profile)[fic_promptly](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/)'s [any, any, impaler](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/258365.html?thread=9855805#cmt9855805). Helen Rossi+Paul (whom, in headcanon, I've given the last name Corwin [Kudos to anyone who gets the double reference there])

She took the bed while he took a chair placed strategically between the door and the hotel room's one window, like some heroic detective or newspaper man in a noir film. While she slept, he sat awake, keeping watch, making sure nothing came to disturb her. The better to keep awake and to keep his mind focused, he pored over the notes he had made, the few letters from Rossi explaining, as best he could, the things that he had seen and knew.

At length, he found the copy of the Bram Stoker novel, borrowed from Harvard University's library and very overdue now -- the first time he had ever had a book out this long without a renewal -- and leafed through it as well as the pamphlets about the historical Vlad Dracul, the so-called Impaler. The more he pored over these documents, the more the details started to run together and the harder it grew to keep the two apart.

But perhaps the overlap already existed: perhaps Vlad Dracul had, in fact, transformed into some creature of the night. His rational mind wanted to insist that the man had simply committed atrocities out of an at best misguided, at worst warped sense of justice, as so many had done. "Hanging" judges had condemned innocent men to terrible fates or meted out punishments far more severe than the crime committed, more than the plaintiff, however guilty, deserved to suffer. Even in this century, rational men had murdered thousands upon thousands of people, merely for not meeting their idea of a healthy human person, and had done so in the name of "improving" or "cleansing" mankind.

But considering all the things they had seen, the man following them who seemed to have a near preternatural knowledge of their location, who seemed to jump one step ahead of them at every bend in their quest, he had come to wonder if all this could add up to simple coincidence? In that case, he could not help but smirk a bit at the cosmic irony involves: Dracul had famously or infamously impaled his victims, either to punish them or to send a message to others that he would brook no disobedience. And his transformation had made him into a creature which could only meet its final death with a stake of mountain ash rammed through its heart. It seemed as though the cosmos had chosen a fitting form of justice, a punishment to the creature that fit the crimes of the man, to paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan. Not a very good paraphrase, he realized, with a humourless chuckle.

The bed rustled and Helen turned over. "Private joke?" she asked. "Since you've woken me up, you'll have to share it," she added, propping herself on her elbow, the diffused light from the window and from his lamp revealing her smirk.

"It's not much, I couldn't help thinking," he said.

She sat up, keeping the covers around her torso. "You do that a lot. Tell me, what thought made you laugh?"

He took her jab as a worthy challenge to his hesitation. "I couldn't help thinking, Dracul impaled his victims on stakes, and now one of the sure ways to kill him is to impale him with a stake," he said.

"Those who lived by the stake would die by the stake," she said, reaching for her blouse and pulling it on before reaching for the scarf to cover the bite on her neck. "Go on, take the bed. You need sleep, too: you can't stay up the whole night."

"But if someone should find this place..." he said.

"I've my gun, and if that doesn't hold him back, I'll call for you," she said. "We'll be a match for him, together."

"If you insist," he said, slipping off his shoes as she slipped out of bed.


End file.
